Solving real-life problems in areas not touched by other researchers — this is the motivation that drives Prof. Qian Zhang. She indulged this passion while working for Microsoft Research Asia in Beijing, and is now fulfilling this need at HKUST with her work on the Internet of Things (IoT) in healthcare.

During her six years at Microsoft Research, she headed up a group that developed more efficient ways to utilise wireless networks for the delivery of multimedia. This led to the creation of an end-to-end mobility management system that enabled seamless roaming between 3G and WLAN, for which she won the TR-100 World’s Top Young Innovator Award in 2004.

On joining HKUST in 2005, she first worked on cognitive radio networks and the concept of dynamic spectrum access and management. However, always eager to develop new ideas, she moved away from the “crowded” cognitive networks research field and is now building a remote digital healthcare monitoring program. Through this, she and her team, in conjunction with medical professionals, have developed wearable devices that monitor vital signs such as blood pressure, ECG, as well as information including quantity/quality of sleep and the amount and the type of food taken throughout the day. This information is then uploaded to a data center via wireless; individuals are then monitored, with advice and treatment given in return.

She sees this platform — which has already been rolled out in several mainland hospitals — as a tool to help bring about change in the medicare industry by focusing on a preventative approach to healthcare through the utilization of the connectivity of devices. The platform is not only intended to benefit the individual: data is available to enable, for example, health insurance companies and government agencies to formulate new approaches and new policies, for instance, to face the challenges of an aging society.

Prof. Zhang received her BSc, MS and PhD, all in computer science, from Wuhan University, China. She is an IEEE fellow, and the co-director and founder of the Huawei-HKUST Innovation Lab, and is the inventor of about 30 international patents.